Are the Hare Krishna/ISKCON devotees true Vaishnava Hindus as they claim, or are they cultists whose chanting and ornate temple programs conceal a hidden agenda? Since A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami brought the Hare Krishna movement to the West 50 years ago, journalists and ex-devotees have written about his followers’ abuse of women and children as well as their fundraising schemes. Join me as I expose the deep roots of these scandals in the literature and history of this neo-Hindu cult.

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Tuesday, January 08, 2013

OF SCAPEGOATS & SUB-HUMANS: THE NEW DELHI RAPE AND CULTURAL PRIMITIVISM

For sheer brutality, the rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder of a young Indian student in New Delhi last month is astonishing, even in a country known for its ingrained misogyny. Protests continue unabated in India and the topic will continue to rivet the news media world-wide for a long time. The low status of women and the ossified state of the Indian legal system make prosecuting the offenders of such cases (few, unfortunately, are reported) very difficult. Moreover, the current state of affairs is also fundamentally incompatible with the rapid modernization that is sweeping across the sub-continent. One thing is for certain: swarms of morally crippled brutes--of which the monsters who savaged that innocent student are a representative sample—have made life a hell for Indian women who venture outside with or without a male escort. Why are so many young Indian men sliding backwards into a state of feral, sex-crazed savagery and why is it being tolerated?

That religion should ennoble rather than degrade humanity is a noble claim, but history has shown time and again that it is often without warrant. Instead, religious beliefs tend to promote self-serving, irrational notions. One of the worst of these uses what psychologists have termed “transference”; simply put, it is the means by which a culpable party seeks to objectify their moral evils and put the blame for them on an innocent party (usually called the “scapegoat”). This practice, visible in the Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as the Vedic system, is fundamentally a matter of a corrupt and powerful individual or entity seeking to ritually purify the self or group from sins for which they are entirely responsible.

Indian culture is permeated with myths and superstitions that promote the treatment of women as scapegoats. For example, the Laws of Manu claim that

So, if a woman is “rambling around,” how to control her? The answer, as the slavering beasts in New Delhi have shown the world, is to degrade her. Worse, people who otherwise seem models of propriety have sought to export these warped ideas to the West, usually under the guise of teaching the“degraded West” the Vedic system. Many examples abound, but speaking from my own experience as an early Hare Krishna follower of Bhaktivedanta Swami, this is a familiar and highly distressing pattern. The general tactic is disarmingly simple: praise men for their alleged intellectual and moral superiority and attack women for being dull, lustful temptresses. It amazed me when I was a young teenager to see how readily educated European and American men fell for this nonsense and so I was not in the least surprised to see how Indian men have reverted to using young women as scapegoats for their irrelevance and insecurities. As one commenter to today’s Wall Street Journal writes: It's high time that these animals get over their gender bias and act like men, instead of sex crazed animals. Further, there ought to be severe penalties.ii Indeed, but what penalties would be severe enough? The rapists who did the unthinkable to such a fine, intelligent young girl anyone would be proud to call a daughter or sister should be executed after a speedy trial. Enough of dragging out the legal process for decades. Like it or not, gropers will soon find their hands and fingers cut off and others will get doused with pepper spray. In my opinion, the pen might be mightier than the sword, but, in a pinch, the sword will do just fine.

2 comments:

Amazing the way two young women are, by some turn of Fate, having such a huge global impact. Bitiya (the tragic Indian rape vicitm) and Malala Yousufzai (the brave 15 y.o. Pakistani girl who maintains her stand against the Taliban, despite being shot by them).

These two events alone can change history.

And you, Ekayani, with your revelations about the horrendous cultist monster Gopal Krishna, can potentially spell the undoing of the iskcon cult. Your story will qualify as a national headline when Tulsi Gabbard tries to run for President (her goal in life being that it is the covert mission of her guru, so-called-jagat-guru chris-butler-crackpot). Tulsi's beauty and brains are in her favour for pulling votes, but at that time she wont so easily get away with touting herself as merely a benign Hindu; her cultist agenda will be powerfully scrutinised, and will undoubtedly be exposed. A good time for your story to get wide coverage.

hare krishnas are just another example of a dick-worshipping cult that scorns women and blames women for the abuses heaped on them by men. i simply will not accept food from those thugs anymore. i listend to one of their pre-feeding lectures and it talked about "woman" recieving punishment in the form of land grabs. essentially women's economic and land-based power all over the world was stolen by force and the krishnas are another male group justifying this unfairness with the notion that women deserve to be punished somehow.

About Me

Many thanks to the hundreds of readers who visit my blogs each day to read the 40+ essays I have written over the past 11 years. My sole motivation is to spare others the grief I suffered as a Hare Krishna devotee. I was ensnared by the cult in 1967 when I was a naïve, idealistic fourteen year old girl just about to begin high school. Thirteen years later, I escaped the hell that was and is ISKCON, having suffered terrible abuse and neglect during a miserable arranged "marriage."
Some of you who have lost a family member to these chanting cheaters have asked me for advice. Here are my recommendations:
Beware of easy fixes in spiritual matters in the same way you would avoid them when planning your finances. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Simply chanting a mantra and offering pranams to murtis and gurus cannot fool the Almighty; neither will donating money to build massive temples in India where most of the rural poor lack toilets and clean water.
Armed with the sword of truth, in these essays I attempt to dissipate the miasma of misinformation cults use to suffocate rational thought. I invite each of you to join me and support my efforts.